I’m (also pleasantly) surprised most of those arch derivatives are listed separately.

Nice to see CachyOs!

I'm perfectly happy with Manjaro.

Fedora is great but installing nvidia drivers is just enough of a hassle for most people to skip over it and choose a derivative like Bazzite

Mint is very plain and simple, which makes it the most non-threatening transition from Windows for casual users. It's also one of the most well rounded distros. Sure, other distros can do specific things better, but Mint deserves its flowers for its polish.

What would be better for desktop use? It’s simple, with wizards and help for setting up almost everything, has support for all the ubuntu stuff like ppas and deb packages so if there is a linux package for some software you are usually covered, and it also doesn’t restrict you from doing whatever you want, so you can change it to your liking (and at least there is a stable base that you start changes from)

If you don't mind me asking, why exactly is bazzite a gaming centric Linux distro? What does it do different from other distro. I know it's an atomised fedora based distro, aside from the drivers and software that's pre installed, what does it offer that it gets recommended as distro for gaming user?

Hard to recommend a distro that hasn't seen a new release in over 3 years.

I used to run Pop, but then updates stopped working. I reinstalled, but the problem was still there. With no fix in weeks, I switched to Mint and no problems so far.

Psyop ?😅

Uh that just might be his full time job? Plenty of Linux is used in the business world with Azure and WSL

I don't know if there is any, but I just came across this talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfWjhEWyblo&t=15868s

This language is a bit concerning

That was in response to fedora talking about removing 32 bit packages, but I believe fedora walked that back and so there is no current threat to bazzite shutting down.

They said they'd probably have to if Fedora removed support for 32-bit packages, which was a proposal to the Fedora Community (who rejected the proposal).

Long-term, I imagine Valve will have to bundle a 32-to-64-bit abstraction layer, like they already do with a win-to-linux abstraction layer (Proton), and are preparing to do with an x86-to-ARM abstraction layer.

Distros do not want to each duplicate the work of maintaining 32-bit support for all eternity.

I'm curious, what exactly makes Bazzite a gaming-focused distribution? Like, it comes with Steam preloaded, I'm guessing, are there other aspects to it?

As you correctly guessed already, indeed, Steam is included by default. Beyond that, we got some of the usual suspects:

• A lot of other OOTB enabling (like e.g. OOTB Nvidia driver support, controller support etc) that one might like on a system used for gaming
• The use of another kernel + scheduler (and probs more) for improved gaming performance
• Depending on the image you install, you get Steam Gaming Mode OOTB; i.e. the UI found on the Steam Deck
• It's perfectly suited for the console experience, because of how seamless everything works by virtue of the automatic updates in the background + updates being atomic + built-in rollback functionality + the amount of control the bootc model gives for image management to the image maintainers

It does a whole lot more than that, but the above should probs suffice.

I used to distro-hop a bit back in the late 00s, and while it was fun to see what the different distributions bundled and whatnot, it never felt like something was particularly suited for one thing or another.

Hmm..., FWIW, Ubuntu Studio has been around since 2007. I suppose it's basically the same idea, but directed towards creative use rather than gaming.

I'm now on OpenSuSE Tumbleweed, and it's just... Linux, I guess? I play games on it, VR, what have you, and it does what I want it to.

To be clear, Bazzite can perfectly work as a general use computer; especially for those that appreciate the bootc model but would like to consume it through a popular 'image'.

If you're running Nvidia, it includes the official drivers OOTB and keeps them updated. There's also stuff like WINE and Lutris already included, udev rules to make sure all controllers just work. For handhelds or home theatre PCs it includes gamescope and will boot straight into gamemode/big picture mode without the DE loaded, saving resources. There's lower level stuff as well, like a modified kernel that makes things faster, kmods for AMD APUs so you can adjust the TDP properly, scripts for setting up things like Sunshine easily. It's also immutable, which is great for gaming because if anything breaks on an update, you can easily reboot back into the previous version in minutes and get to gaming without eating limited gaming time troubleshooting or downgrading stuff.

I have it installed on one of the original Lenovo Legion Go's and it makes it indistinguishable from a Steam Deck in function. Even with SteamOS getting a wider release now, it still offers a bunch of advantages.